Real
by cattail prophetess
Summary: Slash. In which Kit's half alive, Dawn takes on mythic proportions, and a kiss doesn't make it all better for girls who can't stand to be touched.


Real (first post, hello!)  
  
Title: Real  
  
Fandom: BtVS  
  
Pairing: Kit/Dawn  
  
Summary: Slash. In which Kit's half alive, Dawn takes on mythic proportions, and a kiss doesn't make it all better for girls who can't stand to be touched.  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Disclaimers: Characters, similies, and general idea lifted from Joss Whedon, e.e. cummings, Lois Duncan, and Roger Rosenblatt. Prizes for guessing where.  
  
Feedback: Please?  
  
Warnings: Very clean femslash, one kiss, non-detailed references to cutting. I guess it's kind of depressing.  
  
Some of the vampires dress like Kit, with dark makeup and fishnet on their arms. Sometimes the demons look like her, with their white skin, but she's died more times than any of them.  
  
Kit is as quiet as a mouse and half as alive. Her voice is soft and faded, like old postcards, and most people can't be bothered to strain to hear. Kit can think of things to say, bold things that would freeze them all in their tracks, but half of them never make it to her lips, and the ones that do are usually too soft to hear. "Stupid bitch," she says to the girls with long bright hair who come up to make fun of her, but they just smile and ask what it was she said. And if they do hear, it just makes them laugh the more, because it's funny to hear Kit murmur her curses, shoulders hunched, hair falling in her eyes. And every time that happens, Kit dies a little.  
  
She doesn't tell these things to Dawn or Carlos, because they wouldn't understand. Carlos can be shy, but for him it comes in bursts of loud, stuttering fear, not Kit's perpetual incompetence. Dawn makes a show of panicking under pressure, saying my heart was in my throat, but never really seems to do it. In fact she seems so normal, in comparison, that Kit wonders why she's sitting with them, after two months.  
  
Kit is as closed as fingers, but Dawn can't keep a secret. She tells them about her sister, and they listen. Carlos believes it readily, but doesn't want to. Kit takes more convincing, but drinks it all in, especially the parts about last year. Wants to believe that girls who die can, with some urging, be brought back to life.  
  
Kit's house is so white she can't breathe in it. She doesn't like school- the loud noises upset her- but when she gets home there's that crushing silence, and that's just as bad. It's so tasteful. She thinks, maybe if she was brought up in a house where she could scream and rage, she'd be a normal kid, like Dawn, like all the girls at school. Someone who could talk and be heard and be noticed and not feel like she's dead so much.  
  
But she's not.  
  
Kit hasn't had friends in a long time. Not since she was small. She thought maybe in high school it'd be different, because there are people who dress like her so maybe she could be friends with them. But they know she isn't like them, see the way she trembles and jumps. Kit doesn't like to be touched, even in jest, and she can hardly breathe without weeping. She's not ever going to have a crowd.  
  
It's better than middle school, at least. She couldn't do anything to hide. No matter what she wore, no matter who she was, they always saw how frightened she is, and they'd grab at her, bare their teeth in the halls, and shove her, and she'd wince and start. Once she had a friend, but she stopped talking to her and Kit would ask her what was wrong, but she never answered, and Kit never knew why.  
  
So when Dawn asks her to come over, Kit doesn't quite know what to do. She blushes under all that foundation and says, okay, she'd like to. She doesn't know what other people's houses are supposed to be like, but Dawn's is a little more colorful. Dawn lives with her sister, and her sister's friend, and they seem cheerful. Kit makes a mistake, being Kit, and mentions what Dawn's sister does, which apparently she wasn't supposed to know. She apologizes a lot of times and Dawn, exasperated, says it's okay, and Kit apologizes for that too. They eat pizza and watch movies, and Kit gets a little comfortable and laughs her shrieky laugh, which is high and unstoppable. She's kind of embarrassed but Willow says, it's good to laugh like that because it helps other people laugh too. Kit was hoping Willow wouldn't talk to her, what with being beautiful and everything, but she thinks maybe she manages okay when the time comes.  
  
Dawn isn't beautiful like Willow is, but she has a wonderful name. Kits are baby foxes or some such thing, but dawn is the day breaking like an egg, the colors spilling out, paints, reminding you it's not as bad as it seems. Kit's last name, Holburn, isn't anything, but summers are the best time to breathe although Kit stays inside because she doesn't want to meet people from school, besides she hates to be tanned. But even though she doesn't have many friends, and the s aren't much nicer to her, Dawn never seems particularly scared.  
  
Dawn wants to go to Kit's house, but Kit's afraid she'll notice how weird it is, how large and clean with dorky gravel paths and well-trimmed lawn. But she's not sure she can avoid the question for long so she eventually invites Dawn over to do homework, even though she doesn't understand how doing it with someone else is supposed to make things easier. Dawn doesn't seem to find Kit's house that wrong, though, and Kit's grateful for that. She does comment on its neatness, and its size, but not in any kind of a condemning way. Eventually they go up to Kit's room, which she is not allowed to paint black or decorate with posters, so it's basically plain, and just a little messy. Dawn descends into Kit's piles of books, exclaiming over the Edward Eager and E. Nesbits.  
  
"I used to get them read to me when I was little," Kit explains, embarrassed.  
  
"I... well, I read them now."  
  
"So did I, but I didn't want to say..."  
  
Dawn smiles and says, "Why are you always so scared to tell people stuff?"  
  
"I don't know. Habit, I guess. So you didn't get them read to you?"  
  
For the next half hour or so, Dawn tells Kit about not being real. She hasn't mentioned this in the lunchtime conversations about her sister's exploits, making them sound kind of happy-go-lucky. And then she defeated a big military conspiracy, and then she died, and then she boned a vampire, and then she saved me, again, and on and on. Now she talks about memory and shadow and light and her discovery, at age fourteen, that she hadn't existed for very long. And that when her sister died, it was for her, because she wasn't quite a girl so much as a liability that had to be protected at all costs, and never had any stories read to her because she was never a child.  
  
"I'm sorry," Kit says, carefully. She's not sure what she should say right about now, especially considering she wants it to be thank you, to this sunny mythical being for gracing Kit with the knowledge of her past.  
  
"What about you?"  
  
"What about me?"  
  
"What's your story? Come on, you must have something."  
  
"No, not really. I have two parents who aren't home a lot and won't let me pierce my eyebrow, and I don't have any siblings or very many friends, but one of the ones I have is a green ball of energy so it all evens out, probably."  
  
"Okay, that's good." Dawn turns back to the books and Kit's stomach seizes up. Kit has Half Magic and Five Children and It, but she also has other books, like Annie on My Mind, Am I Blue?: Coming Out From the Silence, and Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out. Since she never invites anyone home, Kit's room can pretty much be who she is, and she's suddenly very aware of this. Shit.  
  
"You sure have a lot of gay books," Dawn observes. "Y'think?" Kit doesn't say. Instead she whispers something about their being interesting.  
  
"Are you gay? Or bi, sorry."  
  
"Um..." Kit waves her hands around emphatically and tries to look droll, in hopes that Dawn will interpret her gestures as some kind of answer, but she continues to look curious.  
  
"I don't care if you are."  
  
"I know that."  
  
"So you're bi?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Cool. Willow's gay, but I don't know anyone else who is."  
  
"Yeah." Kit curls up in a ball and works on her geometry. Not all beautiful girls are straight, which should cheer her up, but it's not like she's ever going to be able to talk to them anyway. It's too bad. After writing for a while, she looks up to find Dawn watching her kind of approvingly. This makes her nervous, so she waves awkwardly and says "Hi," even though Dawn is just a few feet away, doing some homework of her own.  
  
Dawn laughs. "Hi, Kit. Is that your real name?"  
  
"No. Catherine."  
  
"Ugh."  
  
"My thoughts exactly, yeah." Kit doesn't really mind her legal name, just likes her real one better, but it never hurts to be agreeable.  
  
"Kit.."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Um, nothing."  
  
Soon enough Dawn goes home, and Kit wonders if things are going to be different now, but they're not. Her house is still white, and her parents still ask her a lot of questions about school, her teachers, and her friends. She still doesn't have much to say in reply. At school, people still talk about her because she's so vulnerable and nervous and backs away when someone gets too close. (For her, too close remains between two and five feet from her, depending on the day.) Kit still doesn't have very good grades, because she has trouble concentrating in the noisy classroom. But Dawn and Carlos still sit with Kit, although she still doesn't understand why.  
  
Kit keeps finding out things about Dawn, like that she found Willow's girlfriend after she died, and that she's cut herself which Kit does sometimes, but it hasn't fixed her so she probably should stop. So she hugs Dawn like she hugged Buffy, even though it's hard and she has to jump back almost immediately, and after that she feels okay, albeit shaken. But in a way it makes her more scared of Dawn, because Dawn has had real bad things happen to her, and that gives her a sort of power. Kit doesn't want to misstep.  
  
Later on, Kit wants to go to Dawn's house again, where the pizza and the colors live. She decides to ask Dawn in the school library, where they'll be pretty much alone and Dawn will be able to hear her more easily. So, she does, and Dawn says she can't, and Kit wonders what's wrong with her and feels like cutting some more.  
  
"Hey, not what I meant," Dawn says when she sees Kit's expression. "It's just we have all these girls in our house, Potentials, and there's not really any room for guests. We could do something else if you want. Like, um.." Dawn comes closer and Kit, true to form, tries to back away, but this response passes unnoticed because she's standing in front of a bookcase. Dawn leans in to kiss her, and she has very soft lips. What she lacks in technique she more than makes up for in gentleness, and concentration.  
  
This is probably some girl's dream, but Kit is going to die.  
  
"So? What do you think?" Dawn says when she finally pulls away.  
  
Kit says: "I don't know what you think you're doing. Just because I'm bi doesn't mean I like you that way. Don't flatter yourself. You could have asked. I don't have to do anything." She gets it all out, and loud. It's lucky the librarian's off duty.  
  
It's only after Dawn blinks, and shrugs, and walks away that Kit realizes the one time she managed to say something was the one time she didn't quite mean what she said.  
  
So, a few days later Kit gets up the nerve to call Dawn. She's afraid of telephone conversations, so she does everything she can to convince herself she's not about to have one. She sits Indian-style on the couch while she dials the cell phone, and after she presses the talk button Kit holds the phone away from her ear, so she won't be scared if the person answering is loud.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Hi. Who is this, please?" Kit already knows this isn't proper phone behavior, but if it's Dawn or someone she's supposed to recognize it'll be even worse.  
  
"This is Molly."  
  
"Um... is this the Summers'?" The name cheers her up a little, but not much. She holds the receiver away from her mouth and breathes as slowly as she knows how.  
  
"Yup!"  
  
"Okay, thanks. Can I talk to Dawn?"  
  
"Who should I say is calling?"  
  
"Uh, Kit." She pulls the phone away from her ear because Molly, whoever she is, has yelled "Dawn, phone" up the stairs and Kit doesn't like to hear yelling. Muffling the speaker, she hears Dawn yell back "Who is it?" and Molly say "Kit."  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Hi..."  
  
"Kit?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Look, I'm sorry about the other day. I'm kind of impulsive sometimes.."  
  
"No, I'm sorry. It was my fault for freaking out."  
  
"You can freak out if you want. I don't mind as long as you're not mad at me."  
  
"Why do you care?"  
  
"Because you're you."  
  
Kit wants to ask why that means anything, but she doesn't, so the next day everything's basically the same until lunch, when Carlos has detention and Dawn's eating scary multicolored jello.  
  
"You know," she says, staring into an iridescent forkful, "you remind me of Tara."  
  
"Willow's girlfriend?" This is surprising. Kit has heard about Tara, who was beautiful and good and there for Dawn when no one else was. "Why?"  
  
"You just do. You're shy like her, and you dress cool, like her, and I liked her, like I like you."  
  
"You never told me you liked Tara."  
  
"I didn't think about it until recently, but then I realized I probably did, and that I like you too."  
  
"Yeah, I've heard."  
  
"So you really don't like me?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"You mean you might like me?"  
  
"Eh. I don't know."  
  
"Kit, you don't have to be all non-specific. Are you now or have you ever been in the position of liking me as more than a friend, even a little bit?"  
  
"I guess."  
  
"Good, we're getting somewhere. If you like me, why did you get mad when I tried to kiss you?"  
  
"Well, I'm shy."  
  
"Why are you shy?"  
  
"I don't know. It's just, when I have to talk to people, especially people like you, I always feel like I'm going to die. Feeling of dying intensifies the closer said people are."  
  
"Kit.. hey, can I hold your hand, or is it just as bad?"  
  
"I'll manage."  
  
Dawn reaches across the table and takes Kit's hand. "I still like you. I mean, when.. if.. you ever stop being, you know, shy.."  
  
"Okay. But, Dawn... I thought I was going to die."  
  
"I know what that's like."  
  
Kit holds her hand which is the best she can do and realizes, maybe she does. 


End file.
